FILM; The Two Minds of the Unmarried Man

By A.O. SCOTT

Published: August 7, 2005

IN the midst of an awkward dinner-table conversation with a former girlfriend and her husband, Don Johnston, the poker-faced hero of Jim Jarmusch's ''Broken Flowers,'' is asked if he's married. ''No, I'm still a bachelor,'' he says, with the faintest hint of wry self-consciousness around the words ''still'' and ''bachelor.'' By now, the audience has spent enough time with Don (played by Bill Murray) to know that he is unattached by definition. If his name weren't enough of a giveaway, there is the fact that, in the movie's first scenes, his television is tuned to Alexander Korda's ''Private Life of Don Juan,'' whose mythic protagonist is invoked by Don's latest lover (Julie Delpy) on her way out the door. Young, blonde and French, she has no desire to spend any more time with ''an over-the-hill Don Juan.''

And who would? But more to the point, who uses words like ''bachelor'' and ''Don Juan'' -- or any of a number of similarly quaint synonyms (rake, rogue, rou?ladies' man) -- anymore? Modified by ''swinging,'' the word bachelor used to connote, at least in movies and magazines, an incorrigible playboy; preceded by ''confirmed,'' it was a euphemism for gay. Changing sexual mores -- and, more to the point, changes in the way popular culture deals with sexuality -- have rendered both usages obsolete. Gay men, in movies and on television, have become the standard-bearers of monogamy and domesticity; look at this season's ''Six Feet Under,'' where David and Keith are, for now, the only couple in Fisherland capable of stability and honest communication.

Meanwhile, the pleasures and predicaments of single women -- the younger sisters of Carrie Bradshaw and Bridget Jones -- dominate the small screen and especially the bookstore shelves. Men who play the field are not quite the lovable bad boys they used to be, but jerks, losers, metrosexuals and commitment-phobes, words with none of the risqu?oetry of the older terminology. In this world, Don Johnston, with his Mercedes sedan, his mood lighting and his flat-screen television, is something of a fossil. No wonder he seems so lonely.

As it turns out, though, he's hardly alone. One of the few bona fide hits in this lackluster summer has been ''Wedding Crashers,'' in which Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn play two unapologetic skirt-chasers who see bachelorhood not as a condition but as a calling. This R-rated movie about not-quite-young buddies who use other people's nuptials as a chance to score easy sex seems to be what grown-up moviegoers, both men and women, most want to see. It pulls off the neat trick of being naughty without quite becoming sleazy, and of managing its inevitable sentimental turn without too much maudlin dishonesty.

Above all, it allows John and Jeremy, the characters played by Mr. Wilson and Mr. Vaughn, the full measure of their charm, and rewards them for it. Looked at from a rigidly moralistic standpoint, their behavior might seem both predatory and cynical, their contempt for wedlock signaled by the fact that they make their livings as divorce mediators. ''Don't blame each other,'' they tell a pair of bickering clients. ''Blame the institution of marriage.'' But at the same time, it is clear that they love the institution, and not only for the obviously opportunistic reasons; weddings make them genuinely and absurdly happy. Their method of attack is not to skulk around the edges hoping to catch the eye of a tipsy bridesmaid. Instead, they crash into churches, hotel ballrooms and rented tents like a pair of cymbals, becoming the life of every party they invade.

And also, not incidentally, hyperbolic parodies of perfect gentlemen. Like any good seducers, they think they know what women want -- or at least what women like to think they want. And so they play sensitive, making balloon animals for the children, dancing with flower girls and grandmas alike, and professing vulnerability when the music slows down.

The movie takes it for granted that the women, if they don't see through this deceit, at least play along with it, and it proposes that, in the long run, these guys are only hurting themselves. Mr. Wilson's John, after the season of heedless hedonism captured in the film's breathless beginning, hears a whisper of conscience, or perhaps the ticking of a biological clock. Could he be ready to settle down?

In movie comedies, of course -- and in the older comic tradition from which their conventions derive -- settling down is every bachelor's fate. In the Universal comedies of the late 1950's and early 60's -- ''Lover Come Back,'' for example, and ''Pillow Talk'' -- Rock Hudson's seductions of Doris Day were always sealed with a wedding ring. This was not just a signal that feminine honor, in keeping with the strictures of the Production Code, had been preserved, but also that the two sides of the bachelor's personality had been united. The irresponsible scamp pretending to be a nice guy turned out really to be a nice guy, and for all his fibs and pretenses a more honest man than any of his competitors. Mr. Wilson's character follows a similar logic. He falls for Claire (Rachel McAdams), whose long-time boyfriend, Sack, is a sanctimonious, hypocritical careerist -- a thoroughgoing cad rather than a sweetheart who might be mistaken (or mistake himself) for one.

The key to Jack's appeal -- and to Jeremy's, in a more vulgar, sidekicky way -- is the idea that he really loves women, and so might be better suited than a less impulsive man to bestow that love on one. ''The Wedding Crashers'' ends, as every comedy must, with a wedding.

''Broken Flowers,'' though, is something else -- a movie that invokes comic conventions, and the undercurrents of longing and regret that lap at the mirth of the best comedies, without delivering the illusion of final happiness. Mr. Murray has his own resources of charm. You can certainly imagine Jack and Jeremy marveling at the quiet subtlety of his game. But he also stands in relation to them as a cautionary figure -- the man they might become when they grow up. Or perhaps the man they will become if they don't.

Photos: Bill Murray plays the devoutly single Don Johnston in ''Broken Flowers.'' Mr. Murray's character stands as a cautionary figure for bachelors. (Photo by David Lee/Focus Features); In ''Wedding Crashers,'' Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn portray skirt-chasing bachelors who really just want a nice girl. (Photo by Richard Cartwright/New Line Cinema)